Shepherding at Home

Today, the phrase, “the pastor’s kid,” often conjures images
in our minds of a child who make unchurched children look tame. It is too easy
to blame this phenomenon on the doctrine of election. While it is true that
there are Esaus in the church as well as Jacobs, it is also true (if we may
believe the Crofts’ testimony) that many ministers spend little time with their
wives and children, neglect family worship, and do not set parameters for the
church to respect in order to protect their families. Governing his own
household and training obedient children are some of the primary qualifications
for any man who is called to the pastoral ministry. Brian and Cara Croft’s
little book on The Pastor’s Family
sets a finger on the pulse-beat of today’s ministry and offers a much-needed
call to encouragement and repentance.

The Croft Family

The authors – with interspersed comments from a few of their
friends along the way – divide the difficulties facing the pastor’s family into
three areas: the pastor’s heart, the pastor’s wife, and the pastor’s children.
The ways in which the Crofts search readers hearts is greatly needed. The way
in which they describe the trials that church members unintentionally create
for their pastors’ families will shock many church members. This book can also
help pastors indirectly if church members take the time to read it in order to
know better how to assist their ministers in this vital area. Some of the
solutions that the Crofts propose, such as spending time with each child
individually each week, are very much needed. Others reveal the low ebb to
which the ministry has fallen. For example, the authors say they now commit to
practicing family worship at least three times a week. I have found that such
irregular goals with regard to family worship can exasperate children by making
the practice sporadic, inconsistent, and easier to neglect. However, the basic
premise of the book is that ministers are called to minister to their wives and
their families, even before they are called to minister to the church. In this
regard, even great men who left wives and children behind and whom God used to
spread the gospel far and wide were wrong and their families suffered for it.
The Crofts give us a jump-start back in the right direction.

In the late seventeenth century, William Perkins urged
pastors to make the ministry attractive to their sons so that more of them
would desire to serve in the ministry themselves. His desire was often realized
in Reformed families multi-generationally. Now it is common for a pastor’s
children in many circles not only to avoid the ministry like the plague, but
perhaps even the church itself. We must always hope in the grace of God to do
what we cannot do in the hearts of wayward children. But we must also take up God’s
call to use the divinely appointed means of grace in the lives of our children.
Woe to us if we trust those means, but woe to us if we neglect them. Brian and Cara
Croft, in this book, have given the church a clear call to reset the priorities
of the pastor and of the church with regard to the pastor’s family. May we
listen to and build upon it.

This review first
appeared in the August 2014 edition of New Horizons.